The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology.
Unfortunately, malicious packet traffic may be received by a packet switching device, such as that part of a denial of service (DOS) or distributed DOS (DDOS) attack. It is important to be able to counter the effects of such attacks, while maintaining the operability of the packet switching device.